lfs-book/chapter05/installasuser.xml

<sect1 id="ch05-installasuser">
<title>Install all software as an unprivileged user</title>
<?dbhtml filename="installasuser.html" dir="chapter05"?>

<para>When you are logged in as root during chapter 5, it is possible
that some files of your host system will be overwritten by the ones
you'll build in chapter 5. There can be all kinds of reasons for this
to happen, for example because the $LFS environment variable is not
set. Overwriting some files from your host system will most likely
cause all kinds of problems, so it's a good idea to be logged in as
an unprivileged user during chapter 5. To make sure the environment
is as clean as possible, we'll create a new user lfs that can be
used while building the static installation. Issuing the following
commands as root will create a new user "lfs":</para>

<para><screen><userinput>useradd -s /bin/bash -m lfs
passwd lfs</userinput></screen></para>

<para>Now it's time to change the permissions on your LFS partitions
so user "lfs" will have write access to it. Run the following command
as root to change the ownership of the LFS partition to user "lfs":</para>

<para><screen><userinput>chown lfs $LFS</userinput></screen></para>

<para>Now you can login as user "lfs". You can do this two ways: either
the normal way through the console or the display manager, or with
<userinput>su - lfs</userinput>. When you're working as user "lfs", type
the following commands to setup a good environment to work in:</para>

<para><screen><userinput>cat >~/.bash_profile <<"EOF"
#!/bin/sh
umask 022

LFS=/mnt/lfs
LC_ALL=POSIX
export LFS LC_ALL
EOF
source ~/.bash_profile</userinput></screen></para>

<para>This profile makes sure the umask is set to 022 so newly created
files and directories will have the correct permission. It is advisable
to keep this setting throughout your LFS installation. Also, the $LFS
and $LC_ALL environment variables are set. $LFS has been explained in
previous chapters already. $LC_ALL is a variable that is used for
internationalization.</para>

<para>When your host distribution uses a glibc version older than 2.2.4,
having $LC_ALL set to something else than "C" or "POSIX" while working
through chapter 5 may cause trouble when you've exited the chrooted
environment of chapter 6 and try to return to it. By setting this to
"POSIX" ("C" is an alias for "POSIX") we ensure that everything will
work as expected in the chrooted environment.</para>

</sect1>